Don’t write a song about her. That’s how absence learns to speak. A name repeated often enough Begins to sound like belief. Memory is a skilled revisionist— It edits while you sleep, Turns every contradiction Into something pure and deep. [melodic interlude] Don’t play those chords too slow tonight, Don’t drown it all in sound. ’Cause broken things feel beautiful When the music’s loud enough around. You’ll turn confusion into structure, Turn longing into art, And strangers will call it beautiful While it quietly tears you apart. Because pain without a pattern Eventually disappears, But pain arranged in verses Can survive for many years. ’Cause pain fades if you leave it alone, Like footprints in the rain, But put it in a song with a hook And it stays the same. So don’t write a song about her. Don’t dignify the loss. Some people leave your life Without becoming a metaphor. And every clever line you craft Will only keep her near— There’s nothing more dangerous Than a feeling made coherent. [transition] So don’t write a song about her, Don’t make the leaving art. Some people walk away from you Without taking your whole heart. And every lyric pulls her close again, Every rhyme keeps her here, Funny how a simple tune Can make somebody reappear. So, don’t compare her to cities Or oceans or light through glass. That’s just the mind insisting Something permanent has passed. Don’t call her a storm or cathedral, Don’t make her holy in your head. The mind romanticizes grief When it can’t accept the end. People are only people. They go because they do. But the heart resists simplicity When simplicity is true. [instrumental] And one day in some crowded room A stranger sings these words, Thinking of somebody they lost On nights that still kinda hurt. They’ll laugh and cry with arms around The people that they know, Never really knowing that every line, was secretly written about me. Because this was never about her. No, not really. Not the whole time. It’s about watching yourself disappear Inside someone else’s eyes. About becoming a version of you You don’t entirely recognize— The kind that waits for messages, Replays those old goodbyes. And maybe I kept saving “her” Because that felt easier to do. You can’t write a song about me— Because nobody bleeds into a microphone Unless they’re asking to be felt. And every word about losing her Was better hiding something else: How I became a stranger, A stranger to myself. So don’t write a song about her. Don’t give her a piano line. Don’t let the reverb bloom. Don’t let that ghost reenter the room. Instead, write about the person you became, (mmm) while trying not too…—
